How Evernote grows

Bending Spoons buys apps/subscription businesses (e.g. Evernote, AOL) and within the first month lets go of ~97% of the acquired employees, lifting the product onto its existing ~600-person team rather than shutting it down. Then optimizes pricing and marketing, where it is expert. Hosts add: products with years of locked-in user data (Evernote) tolerate higher prices, and a large user base (AOL's older email users) can be cross-marketed other apps.

Bending Spoons raised about $600M of debt from Italian banks, then bought Evernote, a well-known US app that was a good business but 'left by the wayside'. Part of a roll-up approach: centralize back-office services (marketing, content, finance) across owned apps.